The book concerns the frustrations of users of the
Unix operating system. Many users had come from systems that they felt were far more sophisticated in features and usability, and they were frustrated by the perceived "
worse is better" design philosophy that they felt Unix and much of its
software encapsulated. The book is based on messages sent to the UNIX-HATERS mailing list between 1988 and 1993, and contains a foreword by the human factors guru
Don Norman and an "anti-foreword" by
Dennis Ritchie, one of the creators of the operating system. Many of the book's complaints about the Unix operating system are based on design decisions and anomalies in the
command-line interface. The front-matter page's
dedication says: "To Ken and Dennis, without whom this book would not have been possible.", referring to
Ken Thompson and
Dennis Ritchie, the creators of Unix. == Release ==